A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
